ISLAMABAD, Jan 3: Australia has asked Islamabad and New Delhi to continue talks to reduce the tension and the threat of military action.

“I have urged the governments of India and Pakistan, through their respective high commissioners to Australia, to continue to work actively to defuse the tension that has developed between their countries”, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said, in a statement, received here on Thursday.

As a friend of both India and Pakistan, he said, “Australia takes an active interest in the peace and stability of these two countries and in the impact of their relationship on the stability of the region.”

He said his country was encouraged that a slight lowering of tension between the two countries had been witnessed in the past few days.

“I have urged both countries to continue to talk to each other to reduce the threat of military action.”

Mr Downer said that Australia believed it was neither in India’s nor Pakistan’s interests to allow the current tensions to escalate into an armed conflict.

“As nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan also bear a particular responsibility to their own peoples, to the region and to the international community”, he added.—APP